Comments from “Plugged-In” Readers

Cannabis may be the only thing you can’t buy from Amazon.com and so it won’t be long until every storefront in San Francisco will house a cannabis dispensary. I already buy my pet food online (it’s much cheaper).

“I already buy my pet food online (it’s much cheaper).”
Really? Every time I’ve looked at this, I’ve found much better prices from local stores (not Petco/PetSmart) and without the expensive shipping. Where are you buying from?

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Right now it looks like the IRS is trying to bankrupt the dispensaries by disallowing any business deductions. Also the Feds have even noticed the landlords of dispensaries that the property may be siezed at any time. Definitely not a venture I would want to get into at this point.

I am tempted to buy most of my stuff online, but then I look at my neighbor’s recycling bin overstuffed with 10Lbs of wrapping and cardboard each and every week all for the sake of saving a few bucks. Pretty wasteful, imho. Stores have economies of scale, but of course they have to pay rent, staff, insurance. They cannot compete easily with big boxes in far away urban wastelands who have very low costs per dollar sold.

These f-ING things proliferate almost always in the poorer hoods. Are there any in the Marina, pac heights or noe? Loads in the mish, loin and now excelsior. Adding insult to injury, planning is ok with having these four stores apart. Idiots!
P.s. I hate the smell of that sh!t too. Stinks up the whole sidewalk when losers walk around smoking it. Keep it in your damn rent controlled apartments, potheads. Shees.

47yr old hipster your biases are showing. While I agree dispensaries should not be confined to poorer hoods, not everyone who goes there is a pothead or lives in a rent controlled apartment. If you don’t know anyone who uses cannabis for medical support, wait awhile, you may be glad of it yourself one of these days.

Why doesn’t the city sell all the medical marijauna this town needs and use the profits to fund the city pharmacy at SF General?
The idea medical marijuana dispensaries
are good for neighborhhoods is laughable.
Try and put one next to a consultate.
It is bad for buildings.
The building on divisadero that took forever to sell because of the terrible smell?
A medical marijauna dispensary…
The current systems encourages tenants to turn houses into greenhouses.. property damage guaranteed.
It is a crime up to the door and it is a crime waiting to happen at the exit of these pot clubs.
They dont have tamoxifin clubs for breast cancer.. why do we need clubs for marijuana?
The idea is silly and kept in place as it easy to keep cash flowing for crooks, and the government does not have to come up with a reasonable plan to control the substance.
If it is a controlled substance sell it
from a city hospital or clinic.
Or let it grown wild and there will be no need at all for these “clubs.”
Heck have the sheriff and his prisoners grow it.
Thr sherriff i tjhnk inmendicono county
sell liscenses. Land s being sold pime dirt in the heart of marijuana country.
Let the City buy a farm and grow it themselves.
They can fund the jail and organic farming to feed prisoners, maybe school kids with the effort and proceeds.
The current system of pot clubs is bad for neighborhhoods, bad for buildings, bad for real estate. Its great for crooks, tax dodgers, and politians who can not be bothered to make effective policy for fear of turning off the pot community.

I’m not going to defend the current post Prop-215 state of affairs because its simply not defensible, but playing the devils advocate here for Kathleen’s benefit, if you make what’s illegal legal, then the pot dealers are no longer “crooks” and “criminals”. When you make something legal you legitimize it, and now those same low lifes that used to deal on TL street corners are now upstanding businessmen and “job creators”. It helps that they’re making 5-figures in profit every month and only a matter of time before they’re outspending the Chamber of Commerce in lobbying in Sacramento.
That was the entire point of the ballot initiative, to create just enough cover so that previously obviously illegal, yet lucrative, activities can continue apace. Is that person coming out of a retail-level “dispensary” a recreational user or just an everyday pothead with an ill-gotten “recommendation”? The police don’t know, and so they don’t try to arrest the customer, because that person might produce a “medical marijuana recommendation”. And yet recreational pot use among teenagers has increased markedly in California since Prop 215 passed.
The unspoken, dirty-little secret answer to every question in your comment at 5:04 PM is “because the legitimate economy is no longer creating enough jobs for the lumpenproletariat and hasn’t been for quite some time, and those people have to do something so they start growing, distributing and selling recreational drugs in order to make a living”.
This is also the answer to the editor’s implicit question as to why these applications are being recommended for approval to “provide local employment opportunities,” while the pet store applications were recommended for denial and no mention of “local employment opportunities” was made in that case.
Lastly, of course we can’t have the city or state or any other government entity involved as a producer, that would eliminate the potential for private profit. What are you a socialist? If that happened, a huge number of [insert preferred pejorative term for members of the lumpenproletariat in Humboldt and Mendocino Counties here] would have to get legitimate jobs. Can’t have that.

Of course, the problem is that selling pot is still illegal! That is the reason cities cannot get into the business. Setting a policy that local cops won’t go after this unlawful conduct, but legitimate players won’t get into it because it is, after all, illegal and the feds may lock you up, is completely asinine.
Make it illegal or legal. This halfway business simply emboldens the crooks and keeps legitimate business folks away.

Thank you AT–a voice of reason. And will the rest of you please stop assuming that everyone coming out of a dispensary is either a crook or a recreational user. There are definitely some people who are legitimately using this safe drug to quell pain and tremor and other conditions that you may not at present be suffering from.

Well, I never said everyone who smokes it for medicinal purposes is a loser. Just most of the people I see on the streets doing so. Are. Losers.
Why do I have to smell that crap on the streets? (and yes, it’s more annoying that cigarettes.)

why – it’s not that SFGH or pharmacies or anyone else “cannot” sell pot. It’s that no respectable business will sell it because selling pot is illegal under federal law and subjects one to risk of imprisonment. Hence, only shady/criminal operators willing to take that risk (in exchange for LOTS of profits) sell pot. Anyone who thinks that people willing to break federal narcotics laws are likely to comply with other laws and ethical standards (tax compliance, weights & measures, etc.), is delusional.
Pot should either be sold in pharmacies along with other drugs and properly regulated, or it should not be sold at all, and the cops should enforce the laws regardless.

“should”?? Pot should legal across the board and sold to any adult who wants to smoke it. I have yet to hear any intelligent objection to this, or one that doesn’t disguise itself as a shill for the alcohol and tobacco industry.